


Nachtkrapp

by EveningRose309



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: -Ish, Ancient Nightmare Bird, Animal soulmarks, Blood and Gore, Blood and Torture, Child Neglect, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Good Gellert Grindelwald, I Blame Tumblr, I Don't Even Know, If You Squint - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mentally unstable character, Mentions Of Characters Smashing Other Characters Heads Against Iron Bars, Mentions of Characters Pulling Out The Hearts Of Other Characters, Mentions of Psycological Torture, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, The Bird Speaks, What Have I Done, Wise Old Bird, You'll understand later, i got that idea from a Man From U.N.C.L.E. fic, mentions of torture, might do a follow up, named after an Edgar Alan Poe character, not as bad as he normally is, seriously guys this is a darkfic, that move
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:27:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21716857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveningRose309/pseuds/EveningRose309
Summary: Bleeding on the floor of a cell, Newt says something he shouldn't have.(Heed them warnings guys. Not as dark as most fics with that tag, but the premise is there.)[COMPLETE]
Relationships: Gellert Grindelwald/Newt Scamander, Past Albus Dumbeldore/Gellert Grindelwald
Comments: 22
Kudos: 206





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Willofhounds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willofhounds/gifts), [AlastorGrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlastorGrim/gifts).



> Last chance to turn back. I don't think I've ever posted a short here. This is a stand alone by the way, the others I'm going to post will either follow it in stead or become a part of my Sacrifice!verse.
> 
> Anyways, enjoy!

"You're markless."

For the first time along the length of his imprisonment, Newt saw the dark lord visibly tense. He froze, his back to the cell, where Newt could see the shadow of a dragon, black and foreboding, peeking through the cotton of his blood-damp shirt.

A dragon unmoving, a long dead, a lifeless thing inked on the skin of a soulless man.

"We both know that isn't your mark," Newt continued. "It- doesn’t move when you breathe. Not even- when you’re angry- when you kill"

_ When you kill, its maw is wide open yet no fire comes to raze your skin.  _

"-it's just a picture, isn't it- Lord Grindelwald?" 

An image. A tattoo. A sorry placeholder for a mark. Even as he spoke, Newt weakly shuddered at what he knew it implied. 

Soulmarks. They were abundant in the magical world, and sometimes even the non-magical. Most people had one, an animal or a beast that moved and breathed as its own entity, that roamed the skin of its keeper and lives as they live. A creature that leads you through the map of your future and to the one whom your heart misses and beloves. 

For years Newt had been debating his mark. For years it had led him down winding paths that left him contentedly isolated from his peers. He'd begun to think the love his mark missed were the very creatures' marks were based on, that roamed outside of the human skin, in the waking world, alive and shaped and wonderful. 

But that was after he'd made the false guesses, the reaching pleas, for the raven had been too fitting to be Leta, a melancholy magpie on his brother's shoulder, or Tina, a feisty osprey on Graves'. They'd been too good to be true, in the long run, and the more he thought about it, the less he thought his own mark to be such or any a conventional creature. 

It was there now on his collar, bare and torn since the acolytes’ first beating of him and Grindelwald had yet to serve him with another. If he would. In truth, Newt hadn't seen the dark lord much, though he’d heard him, his prisoners’ cries for mercy echoing down the halls and keeping him up night and day. Newt himself hadn't meant to get caught, yet of course he did. Poachers, as they were, held no honor or mercy and neither did any of their cohorts who’d had ties to The Greater Good. Acolytes even less so, if Newt’s two broken arms and shattered kneecaps were anything to go by. And they were.

Blood was trickling down his face now. They'd banged and hit his head more times than he could count, and by now he was sure he had a concussion. Most of the time he hadn’t even  been conscious, and others scarcely half conscious, so he could hardly even remember the words crawling up spilling unbridled from his mouth when called. 

His eyes though- strangely, miraculously, fortunate, well, he couldn’t say -were both alright and dandy, if not a bit swollen and light sensitive, so he could still make out the ghastly, unnerving shape strewn across the dark lord's shoulders. In full, terrible clarity. How the blood had managed to steep all the way through enough to allow this he was content to not knowing.

Now said dark lord was facing him, again, and walking back towards his cell. Earlier he'd tried to interrogate Newt, but no sooner gave up, seeing as Newt could hardly hear any of his own words, let alone form a coherent thought or answer any softly put questions. His steps were muffled to Newt's ears but they still thundered, as did the screech of the iron cell door as it grazed the stone floor. 

He was speaking, Newt thought, but of course couldn't hear. The dark lord had a rather soft voice, raspy, but silken. Newt would imagine it sounded nice and maybe that was how he lured so many to side. Maybe it was the voice, had been, that had bewitched Queenie and had drawn Leta so effortlessly in- 

_ Leta _ . The lights began to spin.  _ Leta, please be alive. I know you're here, he can't have killed you. Leta- _

An iron soled boot came to roll his head upwards from the side, the leather warm and wet as it touched his cheek. 

Newt couldn't find the strength to fight it. 

For a moment, though it could have been longer, the dark lord stared quietly into Newt’s face. Newt wondered what he was thinking, his predatory eyes all blank and narrow. The scrutiny, Newt thought, was this what it felt like to be stared down by hawk? To be a mouse in a thorny nest, fresh caught and captive under knife-like claws, and your captor was wondering what to do with you. Maybe Grindelwald would eat him, tear his heart out. Maybe the dark lord was bored and wanted something to play with. Maybe he knew that Newt was delirious and was contemplating ways to put him out of his misery. Newt distantly wondered about his creatures. 

Then the dark lord was smiling and Newt's heart simpered. 

"What a terribly smart thing you are, Mister Scamander. Terribly smart and cunning-"

Terribly smart. How did those words sound so sweet coming from this mouth?

“-and I’m afraid you can’t stay here any longer.”

Just as the thought left him, he was being hefted into Grindelwald’s arms.

The world spun. Newt was seeing lights and dark spots. Grindelwald's voice sounded a cacophony of crashing plates and scratching forks over a centuries old organ. Newt struggled, feebly, but the pale man's grip was iron as he carried Newt out of his cell. 

"Sleep Scamander," the dark lord whispered. "Sleep, Miss Lestrange will be there when you wake, and I'll show you the true meaning of horror when you do."

Newt's world blackened, his heart wrenching a final wrench as he thought of his friend and the promise the dark lord held over their heads. 

  
  


Later he was made to watch as she died. Newt had been chained to the bed as Grindelwald tore Leta's heart out, screaming her name, begging for him to stop, bargaining, as she screamed and cried as he skinned and butchered her alive. 

Later he would wake in a fine king's bed, his limbs free, and the sun gleaming out a slim framed window. Later, he would check the floors with his mended fingers and smell no blood. Later, he would cry on that same floor, tears spewing down his face, crying Leta's name. Later, he would wake alone with a locked door and fresh new clothes and his case on the bed. 

Later, he would wake, but his heart would not be at ease, for the nightmare that repeated itself each time he slept would haunt his day and plague his mind. Newt would not rest, he refused to sleep, and if he did, it would always be in his case, and not the four poster king with the perch standing by its side. He would not look at his mark, even though it screeched and gawked and flapped for his attention. 

Later he would wake screaming, always screaming, for his dreams all ended the same way. 

Grindelwald, smiling, kind and sweet, tossing Leta's heart into the maw of Newt's soulmark bird. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place not long after the first. Newt is taken out of his room and is dragged up a tower. What awaits him is more than just than a nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I WAS NOT PLANNING ON A SEQUEL IT HAPPENED ON IT'S OWN.
> 
> Also hi, I turned Albus' sister into a psychopath(?). 
> 
> Enjoy!

Love was a strange thing in their world, as Ana understood it. So complicated, tangly, what with soulmarks and missing marks and non-magicals' magical soulmarks. Misunderstandings over marks, wars over marks. Suffering, torture, pain. Love coming when least expected, by the least expected. Relief, bliss, and calm. She understood all and none of it. Utter kerfuffle. 

Still, even she was not blind, was even glad she wasn’t. Had she been blind, she would have never seen the signs, and the last week's events would have never taken place. 

Ana smiled happily as she skipped up the steps, dragging along a hapless redhead in her wake. 

She'd known from the moment she'd met him that her brother had not been not the one. No matter how hard Albus tried, Ana simply knew. Their marks had not matched, her brother's and the beautiful stranger she'd brought through their door. Ana had been the first to find him after all, the first to befriend him- after he found her bawling her eyes out in the woods and she begged him to help her find Abe's stupid goat -so she knew early on that the shy little dragon peaking over the stranger's collar and sniffing his cheek could not possibly have been Albus'. Her brother was anything but shy. 

Had he been, they wouldn't be here, and Gellert's little dragon would still be peaking over his shoulder, shyly flapping its wings as he plotted the future of their world.

"Almost there," she said gleefully. "You'll like it up here, much better than that stuffy old room."

"Wh-where exactly is 'there'?" her guest panted. 

She threw him an annoyed look over her shoulder. 

"Silly silly Newt," she squeezed his arm. "'There' is where you'll find your answers. All of your questions, everything you want. Don't you want answers? Aren't you curious?"

"I-I don't want answers. I just want to l-leave-"

"Why would you leave? Don't you like it here?"

"I-"

"Don't you,  _ Newt _ ?"

She heard him swallow and felt a bit of resistance in the arm she was holding. 

"Please," he tried. "I-I just want to see Leta-"

"Forget Leta."

And then she picked up her pace, never minding that her quarry was tripping on himself or the stone they were climbing. 

Leta Leta Leta. Really now, she hadn't gone through all that trouble just for him to see that somber old hag. All the fuss over that woman. Had it been Leta who left him food on his nightstand and made sure he was fed? Had it been Leta who poured sleeping potion down his throat to quell his nightmares? Had it been Leta who told Grimmson to keep off his case and fed  his creatures? Had it been Leta who berated and shamed Ana when she'd been caught red handed with her plans? 

Ana scoffed at herself. They really were alike, those two. Ungrateful, mourning after lovers that have already proven weren't right for them. A real match made in Stonehenge. 

Then again, Gellert was an old twat and poor Newt didn't seem to know how to interact with people so… 

"Here we are!" She grinned, standing tall by the open door way. She wasted no time in shoving Newt through, taking advantage of his lanky frame still trying to catch its breath. 

"S'cuse me Newty," she hummed, swinging the bars shut and locking them. The action and resounding clanging sound roused another occupant of the room, stirring behind Newt as he blearily woke to what she’d just done. 

"M-miss Dumbledore," he stuttered, gripping the bars. "What- what have you-"

She grinned at his wide-eyed expression as a raking screech rasped behind him. She marveled at his sudden reflex, the speed of which he spun around to face the massive black bird staring them both down. 

"Newt-," she purred as he shook. 

"Meet Ligeia."

The bird screamed, a piercing cacophony of crashing plates and clawing forks thundering through the chamber. Ana winced, though her gleeful smile remained. 

"You've met, haven't you?" she said as Ligeia growled. "I think she likes you, you should hold out your hand." 

Newt sank to the floor. 

"Why Newt, I thought you liked creatures. They're your family, right?"

Newt was shaking his head, a sob passing through his paling lips. 

Ana tsked. "Come now Newt," she gritted, hauling him up by his clothes through the bars. "I- didn't go through all this trouble- just to have you balling up on the floor."

"T-trouble?" he stammered, flinching as Ligeia screeched.

Ana rolled her eyes. "Ugh, yes trouble. Do you know how hard it is to lure a demon bird- see her horns? -through a castle and into a cramped little guest room? You're lucky I even bothered introducing you."

"Introducing-", another scream, Newt’s fingers strained as he gripped the bars, "-you- you were the one who-"

"Brought her into your room?" she answered sweetly. "Yes, I just said that, didn't I? You should really clean your ears, Newt. I don't like repeating myself."

The lanky redhead swallowed. "Wh-why?"

A pause.

“Why?” Ana parroted, cheeks twitching. “Why!?”

She slipped a hand into his matted locks, gripping them.

“Why, Newty?” she hissed. “You want to know why?”

Before he could say another useless word, she slammed his head against the bars.

"Tell me Newt," she growled, ignoring his whimpers as she tightened her grip. "How many families do you think- have birds as their family heirlooms? Not many, Newty, not many, but I’ll tell you one of them- one of them owns this castle. And do you know who owns this castle?"

Her captive stuttered: "G-Grindelwald?"

"Correct, twenty points for little Scamander!" She sneered. "Now I’m sure you're not blind. Can those pretty blues see anything Newty? Yes? Good boy! Now I’m sure you can see, our dear sweet Ligeia bears a little resemblance doesn’t she? To a certain someone’s mark? She looks familiar, doesn’t she?"

She banged his head. "Doesn’t she Newty?"

Newt sobbed, shaking his head. 

" _ Newt~ _ ", he yelped as she slammed his head up. " _ Answer  _ Newt, not getting any younger here."

Her captive sucked in a breath. "N-no."

"No?"

He sniffled. 

She pulled him back again, smashing his head against the iron. Again. And again. And again. And he sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed-

-until he heaved, shaky and sweet, uttering a single word: 

"Dragon."

And Ana laughed. 

"Dragon!?" She chortled. "Dragon! Oh, d’you mean  _ his _ dragon, Newty? Is that what's gotten you confused?"

From the way his head was bobbing, she could count that as a yes. And also, a reason to tighten her grip and smash him again. 

"You want to know why his dragon's like that Newt?" she whispered again into his ear. "Why it's gone and he’s replaced it with that stupid tattoo and won't ever say anything about it and hates it whenever someone brings it up?"

She knew, and she knew very well. 

Her brothers. It'd been their fault. Al's for being so selfish and Abe's for being such an idiotic hot head. She'd tried to tell them times before, but of course, they never listened, just like they hadn't with Mummy or the goat. They’d never listened to her, thought so little of her, thought she was fragile. Gellert was the only one, the only one who thought she could take it, listened to her, told her truths about the world, let her go outside into the garden alone or into the kitchen to cook. The only one who thought her bright enough to let read his books or draw things with his quill till it broke and laughed when it did and told Al to fix it. The only one to say the boys who hurt her would pay and actually made right by his words, doing what he said he would, and braided flowers into her hair afterwards.  _ He  _ was the best brother she'd ever had, that she could ever ask for, willing to take her with him, involve her in his plans, his dreams for the future-

-and then they had to go and ruin it all. Ruin  _ everything _ . Gellert's dragon was wiped, he was hurt, and he was never really the same with her after-

-but Ana was going to make it right. She was going to. She promised herself. She vowed, she-

-was pulled from her reverie by the sound of Newt's whimpering. 

Then there was blood, blood on her hands, blood in Newt's hair, on the bars, the stone floor. 

Ligeia wasn't squawking anymore. Instead, she was crooning, leaping down from her perch to sit at the weeping man in front of her. Ana watched as she sniffed and purred at him, all four of her beady little eyes focused, concerned, and curious. She nudged his neck with her beak and Newt put his hand on hers. 

"H-hello girl," he sniffed and she crooned a little louder. Puffing her feathers, he put both hands on her, laxing as she now put her full weight on him, of which she was probably only a few inches short of his full height. 

"Soft," he muttered, all the while Ana watched, suddenly mesmerized by the scene…

Until she heard her name being called. Down below, echoing up, a voice all too familiar, and none too friendly. 

Wordlessly, she stepped back. Gellert would be here soon, which meant she couldn't be, lest he decide to go off on her for her efforts. He wouldn't be so happy with her if he found her standing over his injured soulmate, after having bashed his head in. No matter, she thought, slowly morphing into her obscurial form. Misting, she slinked into the walls and waited for her brüder to come up and find what she'd done. 

Sure enough, Gellert was furious. He got there, rushing in his iron-soles, wand slashing the bars open before carefully lifting an unconscious Newt into his arms. The magizoologist hung limply in her brüder's arms as he carried him down, Ligeia following like the good little familiar she was. Their descent was marked with harsh words as Gellert cursed her, cursed Ana under his breath, but loud enough for her to hear through the stone. Ana shuddered at the words, yet she knew she deserved them. She'd gone too far, letting her anger get the better of her and not watching herself. 

Soon he'd be calling for her, she knew. He'd drill her, then ignore her for the next few days. The knowledge should have saddened her, frightened her a little, but it didn't. Ana was not regretful. She’d done it for him. For his sake. 

Warily she slid down the cracks, down the tower. No use in hiding. She wasn't her brothers, always trying to hide away, where their problems couldn’t find them. Then again, she'd always been the good little sister, hadn't she? Different, but good. And caring. And she cared for Gell. In time, he’d see. He’d forgive her. She’d done it for him, to get him smiling again, make him forget about Albus and the duel and his dragon. He’d see, she was sure. He’d have Newt now, he’d forget, soon.

Ariana slinked through the tower, her hopes riding on her bloody sleeves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up on my tumblr if you want more dark stuff: @evening-rose-309


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bird in the tower had few words to say for her boy...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. So. First off: sorry this took so long. I got a bit of a block, life's been a bit of a mess, and for some reason my bed is hellbent on getting me to not write.
> 
> Anyway, second thing, this isn't Gellert's POV. I couldn't do it with him. This version of him is rather stubborn and can't seem to get a grip on himself for me to write with him. So I chose someone else as you'll read.
> 
> Again, hope you enjoy. This is the final installment, and in spite of that, forgive me if it's a bit more lackluster than you'd hoped. Thank you for your time.
> 
> Ps. I also made some minor changes to the previous chapters. Feel free for a read of those, if you've just skipped to the end.

It was said that they would come every fifty-four years. Every year for whence a babe was born. The family did not know why. It had been rumored their ancestors had been the culprits, men of the mounts, of snow and ice, who struck a deal with a creature of foul nature in return for a gift they could only unwind for when they closed their eyes. The gift would come and go, returning for every fifty-fourth child’s birth, along with the presence of the creature’s descendant, guarding the babe till they grew old and frail or died at the hands of those in envy or perhaps by hands of their own. The creature would go after the child has died, never to be seen, until the next was born for it and the gift to resurface.

All of this, Ligeia wouldn’t know. She was a simple beast of simple need and nature, preying on the latent anguish of mortal minds, savoring the taste and sounds of their cries as she watched them toss and squirm through the night. She had been young when she came by the window of the old castle, to the basket of a babe she could not take her eyes off of. The rest, as the humans say, had been history.

Gellert of Nurmengard had never been a kind boy growing up. He had not been shown much kindness, to Ligeia’s knowledge, within his youth and grew to be beastly in his own quiet way. He would sneak away tomes and start fires in his bedclothes, brew cautionary potions and crude poisons for fun, and often gave Ligeia the hearts or livers of whatever wildlife he’d managed to lure into his clever traps out in the wood. In his dreams he saw death and war and suffering, and he himself suffered, shouldered away from the rest of the brood, left to rot among the parchment towers and leather bound walls of his room and his reading nook with nothing but Ligeia and his own wretched thoughts. He was a wretched soul and Ligeia coveted his wretchedness, his quiet apathy for near anything that wasn’t herself and the little drake who curled around his wrist and lounged about his collar. That silly, shy thing would be the only thing to cull him on his darker days, and the boy would smile at it in turn, cooing things in that fashion hopefuls did, for even in his foulness, Gellert Grindelwald had hopes and dreams and longing for the compassion he’d not been granted when he’d needed this. Ligeia had allowed him this happiness, if only so he shouldn’t die of grief or anguish, and leave her lonely without her primary source of sustenance, a company she had not expected to grow fond of.

The day the lord and lady of the castle threw him out was a day to remember. He had come back from that place where the youth of his kind were made into men and monsters, a darkness over him Ligeia had found rather delectable and impossibly curious. She could taste the death on him, for even when he’d killed in the wood, death had not clung to him as closely as it had that day. When he went, hobbling out into the white with his ill-fitted clothes and grim expression, she could not follow. She knew her place and her place was to stay, a loyalty hewn from a decade and a half more’s worth of company compelling her to remain as he ordered. Perhaps he knew she would, for these mounts were her territories and she’d not known anything outside of them. Perhaps he knew she would grow restless and starved and would devour what was left of his family in gleeful desperation, leaving him as the sole keeper of the castle of grief when he returned. Nevertheless, when he did, there’d been nothing left of them. Nothing but bone and rot and he had brought the girl to see it all, a blood-head perhaps more wretched and more foul than he was. Ana, her name was, and Ligeia had not known peace since then, as her boy brought more and more people to the mount, none of which he allowed her purchase for her song and talons to draw into her maw.

“I have a special place for you,” he said. “By the sea. People you can torture, maim, to your heart’s desire”. And yet she refused to go, refused unless he took her and took her he did, for whence they would feast and savor the fears and babble of those who dared cross him. 

Occasionally, he would let her inside. Inside the castle, beyond the weary tower and gardens he’d banished her to whenever she wasn’t in his room or in quarters, and into the rooms and quarters of visiting souls. Passerbys, but of course her boy would not let them pass by without inspection and so she helped him inspect their minds and sing her song of suffering when he deemed them unnecessary or distasteful. These were, as she’d grown to learn through their decades of routine, those he could not stow on the isle on the sea and toss into the saline rifts without thought or much care. These were those he needed, one way or the other, but had dared to stroll past the lines he’d drawn for himself and violate some prevalent nature or thought in his being. Her boy had many thoughts in his being and for those who dared dispute him were left to fate of being carved on Ligeia’s plate. 

The other boy had been like that. The russet haired boy with moss green eyes. He too had crossed Gellert in some way, and yet her boy had only asked for a single night of dreaded dream, a single moment, a minute, rather than the hours upon hours of torture prolonged through half-moons that she was used to. Moss Eyes also had a dancing shadow on his wrist, a roaming little bird whom she would have recognized had she deigned to wonder about human mirrors and saw her own reflection more. Nevertheless, she’d done as he’d asked and he’d made it up to her by allowing her free reign of the isle prison for a week, dozens upon dozens of minds for her rummage and pluck and gore through to her delight. 

However, that night had not been the last night she would see Moss Eyes. Ana, the restless little mink that she was, had prodded and pulled at her feathers until she complied to follow her to the man’s room. She’d felt guilty about it and had considered singing a soothing song, only to realize she’d all but forgotten most of the ones her mother had taught her in her years of favorring sorrow. It had also felt rather wrong to just be sitting there, perched by his bedside and Ana would not let her out until she was satisfied, and so she abided by her master’s first wish and drew the terror for only a minute long. This would continue for the next two weeks until it culminated in a drowsy afternoon when the blood-head shoved a shivering Moss Eyes into her tower, drawing her in with the scent of his blood, and Ligeia’s first experience of a human hug since her boy had been a toddler.

There were many things of her boy’s Ligeia had come to understand after the years, for even in his wretchedness, her charge was only human and humans had follies. One was that he liked to pretend, and pretend he did very well, often when he was being hopeful or anxious for something. He loved to play little games with other humans, word games, talking games, of which Ligeia would only be privy to by sneaking in through a window and perching up high so as no one would see her. He would hide his emotions from them, his true wishes, whilst his words lured them into nets and baskets weaved and knotted with meaningful falsehoods. He even did this to himself, on some occasions, lying through his teeth, through the very tendrils of his brain, trying to convince himself of things he did not, deep down in his nature, believe. This was, as it were, part of his wretchedness, the wretchedness she savored, and it was that wretchedness that she saw as he was cradling Moss Eyes to his chest as they weaved down the staircase. 

Ligeia knew when her boy was hurt. Truly hurt, a hurt deeper than that of which he felt every night when he was faced with the fate and future of his kind. He had been hurt once before and that had splintered something within him, something that had been whittling away since he’d been a child, something fundamental. He’d assumed she hadn’t known when his dragon had left, had assumed she wouldn’t have noticed when he came home one night, sporting a larger, lifeless one as a pseudo replacement for what he’d lost. Ligeia could not understand the fragility of human hearts, how even the worst of men could be broken by a singular word, a singular action. She had not been there when the Dumbledores had drawn their curses, curses that had bounced off of their sister and onto the loveless boy who’d tried so desperately to love and was punished for his trying. She could not possibly, wholly, understand the splintering, the adverse effects of premature soulmark erasure on one’s emotional and mental state. All she knew was that her boy had come back that day twenty six years ago, something had been lost from him, something more than just his dragon, the little shade that had made him ever so happy and never failed to wrench a smile from his pale lips.

So her boy liked to pretend and she could tell when he was hurt, and thus she knew and could see right through the apathetic facade he held when caring for Moss Eyes, or Newton, as she’d heard him say. Very, very gently he would say, in that delicate way of his, when he was truly confiding something of his heart to her and not just humoring her advances. He sang his own songs of comfort, hymns of wordless tunes humming through his lips as he changed Newton’s bandages. “Necessary,” he would say. “I need him for the boy,” he would say, yet Ligeia knew better. They had not got on well, her boy and poor Moss Eyes, and it seemed her boy was feeling guilty about that one respite. Or several, she could never really tell with him. What she did know was that he was lying and that he did care, as evident in his constant visits, the intimacy in which he addressed Moss Eyes’ wounds, brought him his food and vials of odd smelling liquids he would gently pour down the other man’s spotted throat. Even an arcadian, mirthless creature such as herself could see that.

Now though, even, as she watched him through the window of his suite, she could tell he was doubting himself. Standing over the bed in which he’d laid his patient, staring into the other man’s blanketed form. Doubt. Doubt. Doubt. It was a rare taste of anguish that flitted through her mouth, bittersweet, a little sour in places. A folly, this was, lying to himself. She could see his want and his guilt and his need, but she could also see his determinedness, that genuine thing that only reared its head when he was pouring over maps or fiddling with his papers and quills and ink. He wanted to amend something. Wanted to be genuine. But of course, his wretchedness, the thorny bits inside of him spoke and scolded otherwise. Conflicting him, tugging him apart this way and that, pouring questions and doubt into his mind. Time only knew when he would grow tired of it, when Ligeia would grow tired of it, though for now she was content to watch him stew in his indecisiveness. After all, his doubt was part of his wretchedness. And it was in his wretchedness that Ligeia thrived.

That, and she was sure that when Moss Eyes would wake, a new sort of wretchedness would overtake them both. How and what was not hers to bother, rather for Gellert to decipher in his dreams, of which she was sure he’d seen by now. After all, her kind were thorough, and whatever fate she’d glimpsed in her twilight hours she was certain would come to him, one way, or the other. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to scream at me on Tumblr, @evening-rose-309. I post a lot of my ficlets on there, stuff for giant oneshots, and random stuff as well. 
> 
> And i know that this is a free platform, but em, comments.....I am a whore for comments....I will seriously start rolling on the floor at feed back though i don't always answer.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for Reading!


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